Fire Ser­vice net­ballers lit­er­al­ly left all oth­er chal­lengers in their dust, march­ing away with the best team on pa­rade in the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Lystra Lewis Port-of-Spain Net­ball League (LL­POSNL) on Sat­ur­day at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo.

In their rou­tine in the tra­di­tion­al March Past com­pe­ti­tion, the Fire marchers dressed in their red, white and black out­fits uni­form­ly re­leased a white pow­dery sub­stance in­to the air dur­ing their for­ma­tion. This awed the au­di­ence en­cour­ag­ing loud ap­plause as they made their salute to T&T Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr Pat Butch­er, LL­POSNL pres­i­dent Deb­bie Ann Fran­cois and Courts All Sec­tors Net­ball League's (ASNL) Bren­da Prince.

Fire tal­lied 154 points to nar­row­ly beat sec­ond-place Mu­cu­rapo Ex-Pupils, who did their fa­mil­iar rou­tine to earn 152 to beat Bon Air WH in­to third with 149 in a com­pe­ti­tion that had all 19 clubs that will be com­pet­ing in the his­toric 80th edi­tion of the LL­POSNL.

An ho­n­our which was praised by TTNA pres­i­dent Butch­er in wish­ing a pro­duc­tive year in the old­est ex­ist­ing net­ball league in the coun­try.

"The Courts ASNL has just com­plet­ed a very suc­cess­ful sea­son and I look for­ward to an­oth­er suc­cess­ful sea­son by the LL­POSNL as they grow and de­vel­op the sport of net­ball in T&T," said Butch­er, who used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to praise the Un­der-16 net­ball team for their sec­ond-place fin­ish in the re­cent Caribbean Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's Jean Pierre Youth Cham­pi­onship in An­tigua.

She high­light­ed the staff of the team in­clud­ing coach Vel­ma Hazel­wood, as­sis­tant coach Lystra Solomon-Sim­mons, man­ag­er Coreen David and train­er So­journ­er Hyles.

She al­so men­tioned the se­nior na­tion­al which is cur­rent­ly in prepa­ra­tion for the up­com­ing Net­ball World Cup in Liv­er­pool, Eng­land.

In oth­er awards hand­ed out, Nayo An­chan-Sylvester stood out in her bright­ly-coloured out­fit with a flo­ral top and flowy yel­low skirt, was ad­judged the queen of the pa­rade and Mu­cu­rapo Ex-Pupils won the best flag.

LL­POSNL pres­i­dent Fran­cois in her short ad­dress en­cour­aged healthy com­pe­ti­tion in the each of the four di­vi­sions - First, Sec­ond, Third and Ki­wis.

Teams in the top di­vi­sion got their first taste of com­pe­ti­tion with a new twist, fol­low­ing the open­ing func­tion.

De­fence Force boost­ed by it's new in­clu­sion to the team, men's play­ers Ker­ry McMil­lan and Kens­ley Sandy won the First Di­vi­sion knock­out ti­tle. Led by goal-shoot­er Jameela Mc­Carthy, the army/ coast guard de­feat­ed Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny (MIC), 15-2, in the fi­nal. Each team in the First Di­vi­sion on­ly is al­lowed to use two men's play­ers in the cen­tre-court area sole­ly.

Ear­li­er, the gath­er­ing was treat­ed to per­for­mances from three stars of this year's Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in­clud­ing Ca­lyp­so Monarch and Young King Ronal­do Lon­don, per­form­ing his win­ning con­tri­bu­tion "Man's Imag­i­na­tion", his broth­er Ri­val­do, the ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch, who sang "My Pur­pose" and the en­er­getic Swap­pi (Mar­tin Davis), singing his re­lease Doi Doi, pranc­ing across the de­cay­ing net­ball court.